


Life Didn't End When The World Did

by alyyks



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Force Visions, Implied/Referenced Anxiety, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Major Character Injury, Mentioned Maz Kanata, Minor CC-3636 | Wolffe/CC-5576-39 | Gregor, Minor CT-7567 | Rex/Ahsoka Tano, Multi, Not Beta Read, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Post-Order 66, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-19 00:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16129595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: It had not happened like this.As a matter of fact, this—whatever this was—had never happened at all.Obi-Wan leaned over the man spread over his lap, afraid to jostle him and hurt him further, and felt a braid over twenty years gone slide over his shoulder. The man in his lap was older than Obi-Wan had last seen him, grey streaking his dark hair where the red of blood was not hiding it.---The Force works in mysterious ways. Sometimes its visions are rescue signals. Sometimes good things happen.





	Life Didn't End When The World Did

**Author's Note:**

> The title was originally part of a comment left by ladililn on another story. It fit my feelings about those characters and this time of the SW universe so well, it had to live on. Thanks a bunch for it ladilin!
> 
> Also a million thanks to http://www.swgalaxymap.com, the most awesome tool one star wars fic writer could dream of, to wookiepedia (Legends fuck yeah!), and to the enablers on the chat. You know who you are.

It had not happened like this.  
  
As a matter of fact, this—whatever _this_ was—had never happened at all.  
  
Obi-Wan leaned over the man spread over his lap, afraid to jostle him and hurt him further, and felt a braid over twenty years gone slide over his shoulder. The man in his lap was older than Obi-Wan had last seen him, grey streaking his dark hair where the red of blood was not hiding it.  
  
The man was Cody, helmet-less, bloody Cody. His eyes were open, unseeing, turned toward his left, revealing a gash climbing to his hairline to rival the long-healed one on the other side of his face. He fit between Obi-Wan’s legs even in an armor that hadn’t been seen in the galaxy in four years. His right arm was thrown over Obi-Wan’s thigh, slack hand open to the skies. He was still breathing—both of them were.  
  
There went the loudly muted sound of an air strike. Obi-Wan looked up. Desert, but red and orange, not the suns-baked ochres he had come to associate with a certain safety. No, this was red desert and dust-thin sand he could feel prickle his clean-shaven cheeks: this was Geonosis.  
  
This desert, and the anonymous white-covered bodies thrown among crashed larties like so much props, an odd triangular ship that didn’t fit crashed the closest to their position—this was Point Rain. This was a death averted again, and the deaths of so many.  
  
“It did not happen like this,” Obi-Wan said out loud, and the rumble of strikes in the distance stopped.  
  
“Heh. Baby-faced general.”  
  
A sticky hand touched his cheek and he startled at the touch before looking down at Cody. His gold-brown eyes were wide open and all too aware.  
  
“No, it did not happen like this,” Cody said. “It would have made my life easier if it had.” In this, whatever _this_ was, Obi-Wan could see that Cody was bleeding out, not from the head wound, but from legs crushed in a crash. Life was leaving him drop by drop, red mixed to oranges, draining the spirit and the fight left behind his eyes.  
  
Obi-Wan tried to wipe the blood away from Cody’s face; his hands seemed smaller, less scarred, his robe falling almost to his fingertips. “It would not have made my life easier,” Obi-Wan said.  
  
“I wouldn’t have shot you.”  
  
“You’d have died.” Obi-Wan kept wiping the blood that kept leaving, that kept sliding down Cody’s face like tears. He felt more than heard his voice break as it passed his lips: “I find myself unable to bear the thought.”  
  
Cody’s smile revealed lines after lines on his face and so much tiredness that echoed the one in Obi-Wan’s heart that Obi-Wan wanted to cry. “Thank your kriffing Force I saw you one last time.”  
  
Obi-Wan blinked, ignoring the dampness clinging to his lashes. There was something else here, something…”Cody, where are you?”  
  
Cody still smiled, teeth turning red. “In transit to the Spire. I got tired, got sloppy, got one too many brother out. I _got them out_ , Obi-Wan,” and he closed his eyes, seemingly content to lie there in the dreamed dust of a world they had both left behind to their nightmares several years ago, seemingly content to wait to bleed out in between Obi-Wan’s legs.  
  
This was not a dream. Under Obi-Wan’s hand, Cody’s hair was as short and thick as ever, the feel of it familiar and comforting. The weight of his body was right, and so was the aging, the rough and round of his speech, the added lines under his eyes.  
  
“Cody,” Obi-Wan said. There was something else there in between the pieces of nightmare, something _right_ and something to be _done_. “Cody, we’re coming for you.”  
  
+  
  
Obi-Wan was not on Geonosis, in the sand and the death. He was alone in a cold bunk almost too small for a human his size, in the cabin of the ship he was crammed in with four other people and a droid. The bunk he was not lying on was occupied by Rex and Ahsoka; neither could, or was willing, to sleep alone. How they managed to fit the both of them there as they did regularly was a mystery of physics Obi-Wan had not looked into.  
  
They slept, and Obi-Wan was loath to wake them. They would need to be woken up. It had not been a dream, this vision of his. He had never experienced anything like it. Prescience, vague dreams that foretold later events with just enough rightness to help, yes, it had happened before. A full dream like this, and talking to another living person, one who was not Force-sensitive, that was new. All the same, he knew its truth like he knew the Force: with all his being, because there was no alternative.  
  
He was half expecting blood and thin dust on his face. All he found was the familiar beard, one that he had seen in the ‘fresher just before laying down was now streaked with grey, much like his hair.  
  
Cody was still alive: that they knew. Marshall Commander Cody had retained the command of the 212th and the 7th Sky Corps when the Grand Army of the Republic had become the Imperial Army. Two years later he was still Marshall Commander, still being talked about, still an imposing figure in the ranks of the Army despite anti-clone prejudices and the eternal machinations puppeteered by the Emperor. A year after that, he was a trainer on Kamino, a demotion if there was one. A year later and it was now: Cody was alive, had gotten brothers out— _Were they alright? How many? Where were they?_ —and Obi-Wan would get him before he was lost to the cogs of imperial prisons.  
  
There had been no possibility of reaching Cody safely and be certain he would leave with them before now.  
  
Obi-Wan left the crew quarters without waking Rex and Ahsoka. Another five minutes of sleep, it was the only thing he could give them.  
  
In the cockpit, Wolffe and Gregor were monitoring the nav computer and staring at the blue whorls of hyperspace. Their astromech, R7-B3, nicknamed Beet, beeped at Obi-Wan in greetings.  
  
Only Wolffe turned around and nodded at the noise. When he stood between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats after a pat on Beet’s dome, Obi-Wan saw why: Gregor was slumped to the side, asleep. Obi-Wan rested his hand on the back of his seat.  
  
“First time he’s done it on his own in three days,” Wolffe whispered. His flight jacket, the one that proclaimed “Best ride in Thetis!” across the back in Basic and Huttese, was spread over Gregor.    
  
“How long has he been sleeping?”  
  
Gregor and sleep were distant acquaintances on the best of days. Drugs helped somewhat, the few meditation sessions he had agreed to with Obi-Wan as well—what would really help would be serious medical attention, long rest, and therapy, preferably with a mind-healer. For Gregor, like for all of them, those were not options that were on the table.  
  
The galaxy was not kind to those who had been declared its enemies, regardless of who had done the declaration. Obi-Wan sometimes wondered what he was doing. The Alliance’s work, the opposition to the Empire, was a necessity; he had never been one to lie down and hide when he could do something else, when fighting was a possibility, a responsibility. But in the name itself—the Alliance To Restore The Republic—Obi-Wan had doubts. The Republic had been content to look away when corruption took control, when beings like his friends, like Wolffe, were enslaved to its whims for a play-war that had asked for and cost far too much of them.  
  
“Three hours now,” Wolffe said, dragging Obi-Wan’s thoughts back to the present. Wolffe’s eyes were as haunted as ever, but they held the softness that was present only for Gregor.  
  
“I am very sorry for what I’m going to ask,” Obi-Wan sighed. “I have reasons to believe there’s a _vod_ we can retrieve, but we’ll need information to get to him.”  
  
Obi-Wan had barely said _vod_ , the mandalorian word for brother that the majority of the clones he knew and had known had adopted as their demonym, that Wolffe was starting the procedures to drop out of hyperspace before the current calculated end.  
  
“Beet!” Wolffe called out. Beet beeped back its understanding and calculated the nearest safe ending point, sending the information to Wolffe’s control screen. He barely waited to lower the hyperspace’s lever. Realspace came dark, the thin wisps of a colorful nebula at starboard the only change from the star-speckled void of in-between systems.  
  
Gregor jerked back to awareness at the jolt of the hyperspace drop. Not even ten seconds later, before Obi-Wan could even turn around to the comm console to call up for information and try to get a vector to intercept a ship going to the Spire, Rex and Ahsoka entered the cockpit, ready for a fight.  
  
“What’s happening?” Ahsoka asked, hands in easy reach of her ‘sabers.  
  
“’s what I’d like to know too,” Gregor said, voice rough from sleep. His hands on the controls, checking the nav systems, were unhindered by sleepiness.  
  
Obi-Wan sat at the comm console. The move turned the eyes of everyone toward him. “I have reasons to believe there’s a vod we can retrieve,” he repeated. “We’ll need further information to do so.”  
  
“How—“ Gregor frowned, but whatever he was about to say was cut by Rex.  
  
“Who is it, Kenobi?”  
  
Obi-Wan waited until he had the secure connexion ready before answering. Rex kept looking at him, eyes narrowed—the man knew a lot. Perhaps it was too much in this instance, as his face betrayed no surprise, only understanding, at Obi-Wan’s answer: “Cody.”  
  
+  
  
Here’s what happens in four years, after Order 66, Knightfall, the Empire:  
  
The fighters of the Clone Wars, the ones defending their homes, were they against the Republic or the Confederacy, many of them go to ground. The Empire takes the trappings of both sides and a few more besides. It doesn’t inspire confidence.  
  
There are no more Jedi but there are people with nothing to lose, and much to share. They go to ground, too.  
  
Obi-Wan Kenobi watches his brother’s child from afar for a few months, heal from the physical wounds, then starts a journey, here and there. He talk to people, to groups. They never really know who he was—or if they did, they keep their mouths shut. Those people go to ground as well, but the information never stops. It moves purposefully now, toward people whose names Obi-Wan will never utter out loud. Secrecy is key in those days.  
  
Hope never stops. It gets picked up, passed on.  
  
A year in, with a timing that he can only think that the Force is behind as even just another hour would have made them miss each other, Rex and Ahsoka find him on Onderon, after he meets with Stella Guererra and her group, her brother Saw on another planet with a different group and different objectives.  
  
Rex has a new scar at his temple and new shadows in his eyes. Ahsoka is taller, leaner, more anchored in the Force. Obi-Wan had never thought he’d ever see either of them again.  
  
He tells her, tell them, of Anakin’s— … Anakin, and Padmé. The denial rings deep in the Force, before anger and grief. Rex clasps their hands and starts the litany of the names of the dead, with so many names added since Obi-Wan heard it last with the 212th that his head spins. Shared grief, shared ritual: it will never bring those gone back but it is enough to see the next day.  
  
Rex tells him about the chips. He tells him that Fives was right, that his brother died trying to warn them about it. He tells him how Kix’s disappearance can not be and was never a _vod_ going AWOL, that he would never have left Jesse behind, would never have left Torrent Company behind. Kix hadn’t left much personal effects, but Rex knew his Chief Medical Officer’s datapad encryption key: it revealed that Kix had started to look into what could have been the reason for Tup’s breakdown, had left himself one last note after relaying Fives’ message to Rex and Skywalker. After Appo had been promoted Commander of the 501st in Rex’s place, Torrent Company supposed to take the role of being Skywalker’s arm in the shadows, Rex had convinced the new medic assigned to Torrent Company, Cross, to look into it.  
  
Cross found chips. Cross removed chips.  
  
Rex knows of only fifteen _vode_ who had their chips out by the time Order 66 rolled. He also knows that Kix’s datapad information and Cross’s results spread through the GAR in all the unofficial ways. He knows there might be more brothers who knew what had been found in spite of the official reports and acted on this information—there _has_ to be more.  
  
Hope, again.  
  
Ahsoka made her way off Coruscant after she had left the Order, keeping in touch only with Padmé. She went to her contacts and friends, working out the place she wanted to take in the galaxy, before the war she hadn’t left behind caught up to her. There hadn’t been troops on Onderon. Stella gave her a datapad and a ship on the same the day Order 66 went through. Ahsoka doesn’t tell Obi-Wan how she met up with Rex, and neither does Rex.  
  
They both know the risks, and still they ask to remain at Obi-Wan’s sides. They keep moving, keep working, and it is easier to go on with them near. Ahsoka is not the teenager he had last seen taking the hardest decision of her life anymore, a decision he admired and envied her for. She’s taller than Rex now, almost fully-grown, ready for the hard life being a not-quite Jedi will be, is. There is very little Obi-Wan can teach her still—was this a time past, he would have made noises for Anakin to send her to her Trials.  
  
The old crazy hermit off in the Judland Wastes of Tatooine is seen around Anchorhead and Mos Eisley sometimes. Poor old guy really is off his rocker, living so far out, a miracle he’s still around at all—and this is another six months, another year of gossip for Tatooine, a few moments to look on Luke, to check that he and his uncle and his aunt are safe, to take solace in the calm and chaos of the desert.    
  
Rex… Rex struggles. He’s still the same level-headed and steady man he always was, a naturally calming presence they can rely on, but without brothers around, without _vode_ , he’s on his own and drifting. Moreover, even with the scar at his temple, he’s recognized and judged in the rebel cells before he can say anything. It eats at him, not that he shows any of it—he and Obi-Wan have been, yes, friends for too long to be able to really hide this from each other.  
  
Two years in, they find Wolffe and Gregor. Perhaps it is more that Gregor and Wolffe find them. Perhaps it is the Force pushing them all together, sending wisps of information, subliminal direction neither Obi-Wan nor Ahsoka can dismiss, engineering lucky encounters on backwater spaceports.  
  
Wolffe does not take the information of the chips well. Obi-Wan thinks that even without the Force, he could see and feel the emptiness eating at the man, the hurt rotting in. Wolffe lost his men, his General, lost his anchors and his purpose. His relationship with Gregor gave both of them a stability they can’t live without, but it’s not until Rex is there too that the three of them find a true balance.  
  
Neither Wolffe’s nor Gregor’s chips activated, probably because of the severe head injuries both men received at different points of the war. They still swing by a cell Obi-Wan knows of with a medical base several sectors away, drop information and supplies, get the broken chips taken out.  
  
Obi-Wan can’t continue alone and he doesn’t want to. For all Jedi often worked on their own, they always came back to one of the Temples for companionship if nothing else, for the embrace of a shared culture and understanding of the world.  
  
Ahsoka and Rex aren’t going anywhere. Wolffe and Gregor step in like they’ve always shared the too-small bunks on the ship Obi-Wan traded his old one for a few planets back.  
  
“I think,” Obi-Wan says, “that we’re going to need a bigger ship.”  
  
+  
  
“No,” was the answer from Command, sent through layers and layers of security.  
  
“That is not an acceptable answer,” Obi-Wan answered, channeling the voice and presence he had played the role of High General Kenobi with. The Spire was not a high-priority target, but it was still an important target. The Alliance suspected there were missing senators and heads of states kept there. Rumor went Jedi captured during the Purge had been sent there too—a rumor Obi-Wan and others had tried to confirm since the rise of the Empire, to no avail. Given how the last known rescue mission to the Spire had gone during the war, the Alliance was not exactly keen on storming the Spire, but it was a given that the ships known to come and go there were keep under watch.  
  
That was all Obi-Wan was asking: information on the comings and goings, to intercept one ship prior to its arrival on the planet. Four of the people onboard had already gone for one round of Infiltrate the Spire years ago, and they weren’t looking to repeat the experience.  
  
Obi-Wan didn’t know if the others still had nightmares about it, too.  
  
The voice speaking for Command sighed. “Please stand by, Operative,” it said.  
  
“Kenobi,” Gregor said as the silence stretched, “how certain are you it’s really the Commander out there?”  
  
Obi-Wan did not answer right away. It was a good question. It could very well be a trap, catching one of the remaining Jedi with Force-based magicks they had no real defenses against. But it had been Cody’s hair in his vision, strands going gray under his fingers, it had been the thin dust of Geonosis wiping at him, it had been real, because there was no possible alternative in his mind. No illusion could have been as Cody as Cody was, his Commander, his friend, his— the war had not let them wonder further. He crossed one arm across his chest, laid the other over it.  
  
“It’s him,” he answered.  
  
Gregor nodded in easy acceptance of the certainty in Obi-Wan’s words.  
  
The voice that sighed in the speakers was not the previous one. Obi-Wan didn’t know who they were exactly, but he had talked to them before. That new voice was part of High Command, wasn’t another communication officer tied down by secrecy who couldn’t give him the information he asked for.  
  
“Operative, we don’t have the resources to tackle the Spire. We do not have any near-by operatives to provide you with any kind of backup either.”  
  
“I’m not looking to storm the Spire, or even land. I know exactly how that would end without a full fleet for backup,” said Obi-Wan. “I need to have information on the scheduled transports going there, to intercept one ship before it gets to the prison—to get to one person before they reach the planet.”  
  
A sigh again. “Master,” it said with the weight of knowledge, a confirmation that that voice, that Command knew exactly who Obi-Wan was and what he was ready to do. “We’ve had reports from that sector of space, bad ones. It’s full of imperials and well patrolled. Moreover, any ship in transit will exit hyperspace too close from the planet for even you to intercept.” A rustle of flimsisheets and clothes was heard, shockingly loud. “We can ill-afford to lose your team.”  
  
“I’ll go with or without your information, Command.”  
  
“That’s what I was afraid of,” the voice said. “What’s your exact objective? There are several ships scheduled, but not all are clearly designed as prisoners transports.”  
  
“The retrieval of Training Commander Cody, formerly Marshall Commander Cody of the 7th Sky Corp.”  
  
There was silence on the other end. Then, “There has been no official word on Training Commander Cody’s whereabouts. His post on Kamino does not exist anymore.” That was word enough, for people used to keep a close eye on Imperial affairs. “How certain are you he’s being sent to the Spire, Operative?”  
  
“Very,” Obi-Wan replied. He leaned back at the comm console’s seat, arms still crossed over his chest. He missed the weight of his robes, for all the style was now far too recognizable but in the furthest parts of the Outer Rim. Even keeping them in the ship was a risk. The battered jacket Ahsoka had picked out for him as a perfect disguise wasn’t quite the right garment to hide his body language the way he preferred.  
  
“Two ships are switching positions with incoming transports—only one is marked as making landfall. One shuttle is scheduled to make a stop in the system. Nothing coming from Kamino directly. Do you have a timeframe?”  
  
Obi-Wan let his eyes go hazy. There hadn’t been a timeframe in his vision, only urgency, Cody bleeding out in the sands. “No,” he replied, “Only that the sooner the better.”  
  
“Transmitting the data now,” the voice speaking for Command said. “Be careful, and may the Force be with you, Operative.”  
  
Beet whistled that he had received the information, and scrolled it on the copilot screen for the organics in the cockpit.  
  
Ahsoka leaned between the seats, her hand on the back of Gregor’s seat. She hummed. “I’ll got out on a limb and said this won’t call for carbonite again, right?”  
  
Rex sniffed. “Once was enough.”  
  
“The Spire, huh?” Wolffe said. “Not a place I was particularly in a hurry to see again.”  
  
“With luck, all we’ll need to perform is a proper ship boarding, and not a frontal land assault,” Obi-Wan said, eyes on the scrolling information. Their ship had the advantage of a faster, not-entirely-legally-built hyperdrive, and thus perfect for intercepting larger, slower transports in space. The timing would be tight, but not a great deal more impossible than maneuvers pulled during the war.  
  
What he was more worried about was the mechanics of the actual boarding. They had sealed suits for hull repairs in space that could work, though their use had a time limit. The ship came with its emergency ship to ship tubing of course, but it was flimsy, nothing like a boarding tube or the apparatuses Hondo Ohnaka had been fond of.  
  
Once he saw the make and heading of the triangular shuttle—one of the new _Lambda_ -class T-4a, coming from Carida using the Perlimian Trade route—Obi-Wan had a strong feeling of having seen that ship before, crashed in thin sand, an intruder among larties, forcing him to pay attention.  
  
“It’s this one,” he said, interrupting Beet’s scrolling.  
  
“Carida?” Wolffe frowned at the screen. “Latest was there’s new training facilities there. Bad conditions, hostile terrain, keeps the population in check.”  
  
Obi-Wan turned to him, half his mind on the mechanics of the boarding, half on wondering where and when Wolffe had gotten his information. It often seemed the man had ears on the ground on every planet and in every spaceport they stopped at. “Regular troops or special ones?”  
  
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was both. It make sense for the Empire to gather their facilities closer from the center of power; doesn’t make much sense to send a prisoner from Kamino to Carida.”  
  
But it would make sense to send a Training Commander with extensive experience from Kamino to Carida—and quietly make him disappear from there, or on the way to there.  
  
“Master,” Ahsoka said, dragging Obi-Wan out of his thoughts, “Beet and I can calculate our intercept trajectory, and coordinate the piloting. That leaves you, with Rex and Wolffe as backup, to board our targeted ship and rescue our objective. Gregor stays at the maintenance hatch to cover us and pass on information.”    
  
Obi-Wan’s hand went to his chin, deep in thoughts, and he did not answer her right away. It was a very sound plan, given their resources and knowledge. It however did not give a solution to the problem of boarding. Unless… Obi-Wan hummed. Rex turned to look at him at the noise, and immediately frowned.  
  
“No,” Rex said. “No, Kenobi, that’s your “I’m going to let someone use me as a punching bag, it’ll be fine” look.”  
  
“You can’t argue it didn’t work out in the end,” Obi-Wan answered, too distracted by planning to figure out which time Rex was referring to. He still saw Wolffe’s glance-and-eyeroll at Gregor, and the answering “what can you do” shrug. “Ahsoka, I’ll need you to get us as close as possible to our target when they exit hyperspace.”  
  
“‘Kiss the paint’ close?”  
  
“Closer,” Obi-Wan said, and he ignored Rex’s groan of dismay.  
  
+  
  
Fifteen standard hours later, T-minus 30 minutes to exiting hyperspace and intercepting the shuttle, Rex stood in front of Obi-Wan, the sealed suit’s helmet in his hands.  
  
“For the record Kenobi, I hate you. I’m blaming all my grey hairs on you and Ahsoka.”  
  
Obi-Wan smiled, fastened the series of pressure seals running from arm to collar. “Ah, but Rex, we wouldn’t want you to be bored.”  
  
“There’s bored and there’s crazy plans like _standing on the hull of our ship with only a lightsaber in hand to board another ship_.”  
  
And, despite Rex’s strongly worded protests, it worked.  
  
+  
  
Obi-Wan, Rex, and Wolffe took full advantage of the surprise and chaos coming from boarding an Imperial shuttle via lightsaber and smoke grenades. Obi-Wan had gone out via the maintenance hatch the instant their ship exited hyperspace, placing the soft evacuation tunnel to be just ready to deploy. Ahsoka had exited almost on top of the shuttle, and all Obi-Wan had had to do was jump from one ship to the other with the steel line dragging the tunnel locked on to him, and then dig the blade of his lightsaber in the nearest flat plane in direction of the shuttle’s main hold. A hole, several smoke grenades and a short decompression event later the time the tunnel stuck between the two ships and they were almost done.  
  
A fully armored Wolffe mowed through the line of the imperials still standing, going straight for the pilot and co-pilot stations, not leaving them the time to jettison the cockpit. The change in pitch of the engines indicated his successful takeover. Rex, also in full armor, his face hidden just like Wolffe, stunned and incapacitated the imperials Obi-Wan didn’t tag first.  
  
The boarding only took a few moments, but ‘a few moments’ was already too long. The last blaster shot had stopped echoing that Gregor was already relaying Ahsoka’s warning: “TIEs incoming!”  
  
Obi-Wan cleared the rest of the shuttle, unlit lightsaber in one hand and blaster set to stun in the other. The five stormtroopers, the pilot and the copilot, all on the floor, were the only sentients onboard save Cody. Cody for his part was strapped to the port benching seating, feet chained below the seat and hands held apart by stun cuffs. He barely had the maneuverability to cover nose and mouth from the smoke with his elbow. True to Obi-Wan’s vision, when Cody raised his head he had a fresh gash on the right side of his face, his eye swollen shut. Rex crouched to his side and removed the feet binders and the straps before Cody had the time to ask what was going on, or stop coughing long enough to do so.  
  
Gregor relayed Ahsoka’s second warning: “TIEs in firing range in 10…9…”  
  
“Come on, you’re coming with us!” Rex’s grabbed Cody’s arm and pulled him up and toward their exit.  
  
Wolffe was right behind them, slipping something into his pocket—knowing the man, probably a partial download of the shuttle’s datacore. Obi-Wan rose from his crouch at the last stormtrooper’s side where he had been checking that none of them had been clones, and went in last. He Force-pushed everyone into the emergency tube to slide faster into their ship, Gregor still counting down the incoming at the maintenance hatch. As soon as Obi-Wan went past him, hatch locking behind him, Gregor called the all-clear to Ahsoka and Beet. By the time they both dropped in the storage area, Wolffe had already moved to the turrets guns. Gregor followed.  
  
Rex was still holding unto Cody’s arm, keeping him steady. There was a warning ringing thorough the ship, garbled by the noises of laser  on shields, return fire, and Ahsoka pushing the engines to their maximum.  
  
There was no warning to the ship entering hyperspace, just sudden quiet.  
  
Cody had stopped coughing. He straightened up, body moving just enough to face both Rex and Obi-Wan and have the space to fight if necessary. “While I’m glad for the rescue and thank you for it, that’s some troubles to go through to pick up a former Imperial officer. Who are you?”  
  
Only then Rex and Obi-Wan realized they were both still wearing full armor and sealed suit, and what few words had been exchanged had been on their internal comms—even Ahsoka’s and Gregor’s warnings had been garbled by noises. Had they been trying to hide their identities, they would not have done a better job.  
  
Rex let go of Cody’s arm, and removed his helmet. “ _Vod_ ,” he said.  
  
“Rex,” Cody said, hoarse, “ _Su cuy'gar_.”  
  
Obi-Wan had rarely heard the mando’a greeting—which literally translated to “you’re still alive”—sound so heartfelt and full of relief.  
  
“So are you, and fuck am I glad to see you,” Rex said.  Obi-Wan was not aware of the details of the fall out that had happened some time before the end of the war between Rex and Cody, but it had been years since he had heard them so open with each other. By the end of the war, the few times they had had to interact there had been nothing but impersonal professionalism between them.  
  
Rex tugged at the binders on Cody’s wrists a few times, before motioning to his brother’s face. “You look like you went a couple rounds with a rancor.” He tugged at the binders again with one long metal piece he took from his belt in place of their key. The binders gave out with a sharp click.  
  
“Something like that.” Cody rubbed his wrists. “You got a crew?”  
  
Rex smiled. “Better than that.” He nodded toward Obi-Wan. “He’s the one who picked us one after the other.”  
  
Obi-Wan removed the sealed suit helmet then. “It’s good to see you again, Cody.”  
  
Cody paled as if he had seen a ghost, eyes going impossibly wide. Rex immediately went back to his side to hold his arm, just a second before Cody’s knees gave out. Rex controlled their fall until they were both on the floor, Cody held up by Rex’s arm around his shoulders and Cody’s hand clenched in a death grip on the breastplate of Rex’s armor, knuckles gone white.  
  
“Cody, Cody, come on brother, breathe,” Rex said. Cody’s inhale was shockingly loud. “Better, keep doing that, got it?”  
  
Obi-Wan crouched at a reasonable distance, all too aware of the maelstrom of emotions whipping through his former second in command. The strongest feeling was dread and despair, so dark and deep it colored everything else Cody was projecting. It shadowed Rex’s relief at seeing Cody again, it echoed like an endless canon shot, it dragged all of Cody’s thoughts down and down and down, an unstoppable fall—  
  
Obi-Wan swallowed, reached out. Cody flinched, and Obi-Wan did his best to not react at the fear in the movement, only kept going until one cool gloved hand covered a fever-warm, trembling hand. “It’s very, very good to see you again,” he repeated, meeting Cody’s eyes.  
  
“Is this real?” Cody’s words were barely loud enough to be heard.  
  
There was a sound at the door to the storage space, the heavier thread of armored footsteps—Wolffe and Gregor.  
  
Obi-Wan squeezed Cody’s hand. “You called to me, and so I came.”  
  
+  
  
Ahsoka jumped them in and out of real space, recalculating their route several times, making them impossible to follow. She finally stopped in the Essaga sector, after doubling back from the Expansion Region into the Outer Rim.  
  
Rex had led Cody to the bunks, Wolffe and Gregor following. Obi-Wan had left them to their reunion, offering only a quiet “let’s talk later” to Cody. Cody hadn’t really reacted—shock, grief, impossible hope.  
  
It was quiet in the cockpit. There wasn’t much to see where they had stopped. The galaxy core was a dim glow band at starboard. At port, they could only guess at the closest stars of Hutt Space.  
  
Ahsoka glanced at Obi-Wan in the co-pilot’s seat. “Is Cody okay?”  
  
Obi-Wan tried not to sigh. Cody’s emotions, and his reaction, had felt like an endless void, despair and guilt, one all too easy to get trapped in—one all too familiar. Obi-Wan was also suspecting the new injury on Cody’s face wasn’t the only recent one on the clone’s body. The orange jumpsuit Cody was wearing had seemed too large, the hand under Obi-Wan’s too warm, too thin. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hope he will be.”  
  
“Master…” Ahsoka started. “I— well, I’m not a Jedi anymore, so it doesn’t really apply anyway. But you kinda are, and Skyguy was one as well.” She fidgeted at the helm. Obi-Wan distracted himself from her mention of Anakin by thinking that he could not recall the last time he had seen her do so, even when she was a fourteen years old Padawan thrown into situations she had never been trained for, into situations no person should have been thrown into. Ahsoka had always held herself with confidence. “So I was wondering, how do you reconcile the Code with loving someone, or more than one person, so much that you’d risk yourself for them?”  
  
She was not talking about herself, Obi-Wan realized after an instant. She was talking about all of them. She was talking about him, and Cody. Was he in love with Cody? They had never had the time nor the freedom to wonder. The words of his dream, of the vision, came back to him: _I find myself unable to bear the thought_. He stared at the stars and tried not to fold his arms across his chest.  
  
“I don’t know, Ahsoka,” he heard himself say. “I never quite managed.” Ahsoka, Rex, Gregor, Wolffe and him, and now Cody—their ship, their…make-shift family. _Yes_ , he told himself, _for those people, for my family who I love and who love me back, I’d risk my life for theirs: I have already done so_ , and he saw Satine’s face in his mind’s eye. There was a difference between putting his life on the line for duty and choosing to do so so the people you loved would live on. “I follow the Force. There have been times…there have been times the Force and the Code were not the same thing.” Anakin had always been too impatient and too taken with Obi-Wan’s image as the Jedi’s Jedi that he had been forced into after Qui-Gon’s death to see that—to see all the ways in which his master had rebelled. Obi-Wan turned to look at Ahsoka. “There have been times the Force and what the Council said were not the same thing. But I think you knew that, already.”  
  
She was grown, his grand-padawan. She had walked away and she had chosen her own path and it had saved her life.    
  
Obi-Wan preferred not to think of the last days of the Order as he had known it all his life, nor meditate on it; he saw those days, the empty halls, the deaths felt one after the other in his nightmares enough as it was. He was very aware he had to think about it, and at least write about it and the Order in general. Something had to outlive him, if only as a warning, if anything happened before Luke, or another Force Sensitive, came to seek him out.  
  
Ahsoka held his gaze steadily.  
  
“Were we still in the Republic and the Order as it was, I’d have pushed Anakin to present you for your Trials four years ago. As it is, as a member of the last Council and your grandmaster, I consider your Trials passed. The title of Jedi Knight is yours, Ahsoka, and it is more than deserved. I am honored to have been part of your journey.”  
  
“But I left,” she said. Her eyes were very wide.  
  
“So did I,” Obi-Wan answered, “to help fight in a doomed conflict when I was about the age you were when you left the Order,” and he smiled at the shock in her eyes.  
  
Gregor and Wolffe entered the cockpit, interrupting the question Ahsoka was undoubtedly about to ask. Wolffe was back in his clothes and flight jacket. Unlike Rex, who looked more like himself and more comfortable when wearing his mismatched armor, Wolffe preferred clothes that made him part of any crowd in any spaceport around the galaxy; visual camouflage.  
  
“Cody crashed, Rex’s keeping an eye on him. Next step?” Wolffe asked. Obi-Wan rose up, switching places with him.  
  
“We’re going to need to hit a medical outpost,” Gregor said, stepping in to stand behind the co-pilot’s seat. He caught Obi-Wan’s eye. “We can make do with our kit but he’s going to need more bacta and professionals than what we got on board.”  
  
“Let’s update Command and go from there. How much fuel and supplies do we have?”  
  
Ahsoka was still looking at him like she wanted to shake him down, which he was sure she’d find a moment to do once off the helm.  
  
Command answered fast, this time, layers of security snapping into place. “Great job, Operative,” the voice said, and it was so modified Obi-Wan could not quite figure out if that was sarcasm. “We’ve had reports coming in you’ve had Imperials running around like fireants in the sector.”  
  
“Our target was retrieved.”  
  
“Transmit all relevant information as soon as possible. And for the love of the Force, _keep a low profile_.” The transmission cut.  
  
“Sounds like enforced vacation time.” Gregor leaned on the back of the co-pilot seat, head on his fist.  
  
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. “Any destination in mind?”  
  
“Tatooine?” was Ahsoka’s first suggestion. At Wolffe’s scowl and Gregor’s grimace, she expanded: “People expect to see Kenobi there,” and Obi-Wan did not miss that the “master” was missing now, and that she had taken to call him the way the clones did, “There’s already a base of operation, and no-one will bat an eye at new people hiding their identities.”  
  
“Too much sand,” Wolffe growled.  
  
“No medical facilities, the base is a hut in the middle of nowhere and too small, getting a new, larger ship that can fly without extensive repairs will be hard and expensive,” Gregor countered, counting reasons on his fingers.  
  
“My other option is Stella’s group, but I don’t have their current coordinates.”  
  
“Wolffe,” Obi-Wan said, “do you have a suggestion?”  
  
“Several. Far out of the way place called Lothal, Takodana—if only to swap ships— Aquella in the Senex system, though I’m not taking bets on our capacity to stay under the radar of the ruling houses. Dantooine.”  
  
The last name was thrown in like a dare. There was an Alliance outpost on Dantooine where centuries ago, in the times of the Jedi-Sith Wars, there had been a Jedi Enclave. Obi-Wan hadn’t known that Wolffe knew of it. Takodana, now that was interesting: the planet ruled by the pirate queen herself, the center of information and trade for many a pirate and mercenary crew.  
  
“Takodana is a hive of scum and villainy, no offense to Maz Kanata. Our presence would be relayed to the Empire immediately for a paycheck.”  
  
“We could still go there to swap the ship, with just a couple people,” Ahsoka said. “Maz owes Rex and me one.”  
  
“Dantooine?” Wolffe poked.  
  
It was Obi-Wan’s turn to grimace. “It was a well-known Jedi enclave. Considering who is in power, that seems an unnecessary risk—unnecessary risk to have an outpost there in the first place. Lothal has old Temples, as well.”  
  
“What about Crait?” Gregor asked.  
  
“Crait? Where is that?”  
  
Gregor looked at Obi-Wan, asking him with a gesture to answer Ahsoka’s question. Obi-Wan again wondered where Wolffe and Gregor got their information—and how many of the current Alliance outposts and hiding places they knew.  
  
“Outer Rim, in the Grumani Sector, off the Triellus Trade Run. It’s a couple of sectors away from Naboo, but it’s out of the way. I believe the last permanent mining settlement was dismantled over six centuries ago. There isn’t much more than salt and rocks—and a fully staffed Alliance outpost.”  
  
“I’ve never heard of the place.” Ahsoka’s sentiment was echoed on Wolffe’s face.  
  
Beet brought the coordinates up and whistled. Wolffe joined him. “It’s pretty much on the other side of the galaxy from us here,” he said.  
  
Ahsoka studied the nav screen. “We can get there using the lesser roads, but it’s going to take longer than straight-up taking the Perlimian Trade Road and the Hydian Way by a couple standard days. Our supplies and fuel will hold, but we’ll need to resupply pretty much immediately after.”  
  
“Calculate a route going through Mon Gazza—if I may,” Obi-Wan added, reaching above Ahsoka’s shoulder and montral to tap at the nav console, showing the modified partial map the ship nav core kept of friendly and less-friendly systems. Mon Gazza was still an ambivalent grey. “The Empire is still having some issues to establish dominance there. We can make some credits, resupply for us and for extras for the outpost, and continue from there.”  
  
“With no troubles?” Wolffe asked, with half a smile.  
  
Obi-Wan returned it. “Depends what you count as trouble.”  
  
Ahsoka stretched and smiled, teeth sharp. “Try to bet on the right pod and don’t blow up anything, Kenobi.”  
  
+  
  
They had a list, even several, in descending order of importance of things needed for the ship and for them. Most of it was the basics: food, fuel, water, bacta, medicine, hygiene items, energy cells. There was the odd “this alternator can last another three hundred hours, please replace before that” and “new screwdriver” too, and the “information fund” pile. Then there was the list of things that was always useful to drop to Alliance outposts or operatives, a scaled-up duplicate of the list of basics. The extras were never written down, and were mostly little things—a higher grade of tea or caff, a bag of sweets, a new shirt, fresh fruit, novel chips, a nicer bottle of alcohol than whatever was watered down in the cantina they were at to conduct business and gauge the atmosphere.  
  
When they could, and did not have an Alliance courier or paid cargo run taking precedence, they went out and played cards, the local version of sabacc or the odd pazaak game, or bet on races, or another dozen small ways to cheat and earn untraceable money in the spaceports of the galaxy. They took care never to win huge sums, and never from the same group of people, just enough to go down their checklist. The Empire of course was making that harder; the closer one went to the Core, the harder it was to be paid cash, all the money slowly turned to Imperial Credits dematerialized and traced and controlled.  
  
Mon Gazza and its endless pod races were still buckling the control the Empire was attempting to put together, and pod races were very, very lucrative. The whole economy of the planet was based on it.  
  
They left before the local Hutt representatives started asking questions about the group betting on underdogs for good amounts of hard credits and valuable materials. Of course, they also went to another, smaller, and cheaper, system to actually buy what they needed, going down both lists of basics supplies, and from which they left a message for the Crait outpost via Command warning them of their arrival and their need of medical assistance.  
  
Cody slept through all of it.  
  
+  
  
Obi-Wan stopped at the door of the bunk room. They still had four days of hyperspace to go before they reached Crait. Cody had woken up on and off after they had stopped to resupply and refuel, mostly when Rex was there with him. They had wordlessly agreed not to let Cody alone, both for comfort and for security. Cody had crashed pretty hard after the rescue, fever spiking up to the point Gregor—who was acting as their medic and the one who knew exactly what he had given Cody until now—made noises about putting him in the fresher and turning on the water as cold as it got. But it was just one part of the symptoms, coming from clear exhaustion, not having the time to take care of himself, and untreated wounds from what they all suspected was torture. Now that Cody was in a safe place, with three _vode_ and two Force-users around, he could let go: and letting go was attempting to catch up on rest with an overwhelmed system.  
  
Cody also didn’t have the tell-tale scar of a removed chip; however the wound on his head was high and deep enough to have caused damage to it. It was the lack of confirmation one way or another that was a problem.  
  
Privately, Obi-Wan believed the chip had to have stopped working well before Cody was wounded, for him to have helped _vode_ leave the Imperial Army, and this despite the fact he hadn’t had been able to talk with Cody to get confirmation of the information he had received in the vision—a vision Obi-Wan still hadn’t shared the details of with the others.  
  
He hadn’t had been able to talk with Cody at all.  
  
They needed to, had needed to since they had agreed that friends was as much as they could be while the war and the enslavement of the GAR’s troopers was going on.  
  
Rex opened the door. The light was dimmed inside, the dull warmth of a red star. Obi-Wan lifted the two steaming mugs in his hands.  
  
“Caf or tea?”  
  
“Is that even a question, Kenobi?”  
  
Obi-Wan pressed the caf mug into Rex’s hand. Rex stepped back into the room, and Obi-Wan followed him.  
  
Rex sat in the bunk opposite the one where Cody was lying down, dead to the world. He raised an eyebrow at Obi-Wan over his mug, head tilted to his side and the open space there. Obi-Wan took the invitation, removed the datapad laying there and sat down. The datapad was showing notes, lists of dates and names and coordinates.  
  
“Cody’s information?” Obi-Wan asked.  
  
Rex hummed. “He was transferred to Carida six months ago.” He took a sip. “In the two years before that, he had enough clout and connections to get _vode_ out. That’s the list of most of them, he hasn’t been very coherent the last few times he was awake.”  
  
Obi-Wan gazed at the names that he could recognize immediately, recalled Cody’s words in the vision— _I got them out, Obi-Wan_. Across from him, Cody was still sleeping, eyebrows drawn together, lines under his eyes, unhealthy flush high on his cheekbones. The wounded side of his face glistened with drying bacta. Out of the orange prisoner uniform and wearing dark-colored clothes coming from the clones’ supplies, it was obvious he had lost muscle mass compared to his brothers, an unhealthy thinness that carved him out.  
  
“Did he say what happened?”  
  
Rex stared straight away, muscles playing under the skin of his jaw. “He was found out, that’s all he told me. Gregor’s afraid it’s turning into generalized infection, but our medscanner is shit. He wants to sedate him until Crait if it gets any worse.” It was implied in Rex’s words and tone that the only thing they could do was keep Cody comfortable, and keep going and get professional medical help, because battlefield medicine was not enough, that what they could buy and keep stocked in the ship’s medkit was not enough. A moment passed before Rex turned his head and looked at Obi-Wan. “How did you know he was going to be there, that he wasn’t controlled by the chip anymore?”  
  
“I dreamed of, or saw again, Point Rain,” Obi-Wan said. He raised his tea to his lips, then lowered it back without drinking. “And he was there, like he was the one whose lartie had crashed, but he was the age he is now, he had,” he gestured to his face, “the wound, and I was the one who was twenty instead.” Twenty and still a Padawan and seeing one more person he cared for—loved—die in his arms.  
  
Rex frowned. “And he told you, in the what, the dream, the vision, that he was being sent to the Spire?”  
  
“Yes.” Obi-Wan took a sip, finally. In the face of Rex’s confusion, he continued: “The Force—it is, has always been, more than the Order talks about. There are…were, millennia of archives chronicling ways in which the Force reached through and touched even untrained and non-Force-sensitive beings.”  
  
“That has anything to do with the conversation that blew Ahsoka’s mind a little, in her words?”       
  
Ahsoka looked like she was sitting on her questions until she knew exactly how to ask them and if she was ready for the answers ever since he had told her the title of Jedi Knight was hers. “Some. By the end of it, I doubt an in-depth exploration of the multiple Force cults and the history of the Order was a priority of education in the Temple.” He shook his head. “Thinking of the Jedi as an unchangeable, monolithic entity is a mistake.”  
  
“…I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you talk so much about that, and you’re really not sounding like High General, Sitting-on-the-Council Master Kenobi.”  
  
Obi-Wan smiled, closing his eyes for an instant. “We all had our roles to play, Rex.”    
  
“And yours was to hide how much of a heretic you can be?” Rex bumped into his shoulder with his. “I’d like to hear more, whenever you want to talk about it,” he added in a quieter voice, still leaning against Obi-Wan.  
  
Obi-Wan did not answer, not verbally. He leaned back, feeling the warmth of Rex’s body through their clothes. Rex finished his caf after a few moments, got up from the bunk, stretched his arms above his head. He turned to look at Obi-Wan like he was searching for an answer to a question he hadn’t asked, then looked at Cody. He shook his head, then gave Obi-Wan a sharp nod and left without another word.  
  
Obi-Wan laid the datapad at his side on the bunk. Then he took off his boots, and sat crosslegged with his tea held in his lap, waiting, not quite meditating. Yes, one day, he would have to talk about it, the Force and the theories about it and the history of the cults across the galaxy who followed it, among many other subjects the Order had kept for itself in the last decades. It was dangerous to let knowledge disappear in favor of diametrically opposed viewpoints such as the last organized Jedi Order and the Sith claimed. The only certainty—his only certainty, the one at the very center of his existence—was the Force.  
  
That, and that again, Rex knew a lot.  
  
Cody’s eyes opened, revealing only a sliver of brown irises.  
  
“Would you care for some tea, Cody?” Obi-Wan asked, keeping his voice low, as if this was just another shift on the _Negotiator_ and they had to make their way through the endless amount of paperwork leading the 3rd System Army generated. What he felt was not nostalgia—how could one long for the days of war—no, it was closer to a brief longing for familiar settings and expectations. The feeling seemed to be echoed outside of himself for an instant.  
  
“I thought you were dead. I thought I had killed you.” Cody’s words were barely more than a dry whisper.  
  
“You didn’t.”  
  
Cody blinked, a long, exhausted blink. “What you told Rex,” he said. His eyes closed, opened. “The dream…it was real?”  
  
“I guess it depends on your definition of reality,” and Obi-Wan did not smile at Cody’s weak disgruntled glare, he certainly did not, “but if the question is, ‘did it happen?’ then yes, it really did.”  
  
“ ‘m sorry.” Cody took a long, shuddering breath. “I didn’t— I’m sorry—”  
  
“Cody,” Obi-Wan simply said, moving from the bunk to the floor, kneeling by Cody’s head, his tea put to the side on the floor. “Please, no—I should be the one apologizing to you, for so many things, for putting you into this position.” He could feel Cody’s emotions again, the despair, the hopelessness of being stuck into a situation he had no control over, the anger turned inward and the sense of regrets, of never acting on mutual possibilities, of duty and orders and lies. Obi-Wan was quite familiar with it from the other side—his chest felt tight with it. “We had warnings, red flags, and still we did nothing.” They—the Jedi Order, the High Council—had been led around by lies and complacency and being thrust into positions they should never have been in—and then smothered into those positions without the growth and learning curve that would have saved lives, including their owns.  
  
Obi-Wan couldn’t dwell on the past. It was far too easy, after all, to see how they’d all been led around and manipulated after the facts.  
  
Cody closed his eyes again. “The chips?” He took a breath, another, and it sounded like a hard rattle went through his lungs. Obi-Wan frowned, told himself he’d need to grab Gregor once Cody fell asleep again and tell him about it. “Rex warned me. Or tried. He was right and I saw that too late,” his voice trailed off.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said, and he meant for it to cover the chips, Cody’s fall out with Rex that he was now understanding better, Cody’s pain and his struggle. Cody didn’t open his eyes; he looked exhausted. After a few minutes, his breathing evened out, and he fell asleep once again.  
  
Obi-Wan stayed there, kneeling on the floor by Cody’s head, wanting to touch him to make sure he was really there, and not daring to do so, remembering the stickiness of wiping blood off his face with dream-hands, until Wolffe knocked on the door and took the next shift. Obi-Wan took his leave then with a nod, grabbing the cold tea cup from the floor. After he rinsed it in the small galley, he went to the turret guns station: there would be just enough space for him to sit down, but space to stretch wasn’t needed for meditation.  
  
Meditation came faster than sleep that day, like it usually did, and still it held no answers as to what more he could do and where to go from there.  
  
+  
  
Cody’s condition did not visibly improve over the next day. He seemed to be able to rest better when one of his brothers was in the same room, but he was only awake at infrequent intervals, and for short amounts of time. Sleep seemed to be the best medicine they had.  
  
Wolffe grumbled things about the long-necks so-called perfect engineering of their bodies being full of shit if a fever was enough to fuck it up to that point, not that it surprised him— it was Wolffe’s version of worrying, and a common expression of the deep disdain he held for the Kaminoans.  
  
Gregor sought Obi-Wan out early in their arbitrary day to meditate, his anxiety over what he could and couldn’t do for Cody as their acting medic spiking up. They hid in what little space there was left in the cargo bay, in between the containers of supplies they had purchased after Mon Gazza. It took quite a while before Gregor was even willing to talk about what was eating at him.  
  
“We trust your judgement, Gregor,” Obi-Wan said.  
  
“ _I_ don’t trust it,” Gregor said, hands passing through his hair in both frustration and comfort. He kept it longer than Wolffe, and unlike Wolffe’s and Cody’s, it was mostly straight, and perpetually in a bed-head state for all little Gregor actually slept. “There’s nothing I can do, for that or for Cody and I don’t know what to _do_.” He dropped his hands, crossed his arms across his chest, looking away.  
  
“I can’t say it’s not a feeling I’m familiar with,” Obi-Wan replied.  
  
Gregor looked up at him. They understood each other then, without having to say more. Having, for a moment, the companionship of another who was powerless in that situation and knew about it and chafed at it was enough. It had to be enough.  
  
Ahsoka came looking for them then. To Obi-Wan, it was obvious she still holding her questions back, and that she was chewing both on them and the consequences of knowledge. He felt a burst of fondness for her, this brilliant kid he had had the privilege to see grow.  
  
“Kenobi,” she said. “Cody was asking for you, if he didn’t fall asleep again already.”  
  
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said. He looked at Gregor, then at Ahsoka again, with a smile. “If you wanted to try to meditate more, I’m sure Ahsoka would be pleased to help—and meditate as well.”  
  
Ahsoka groaned theatrically, leaning on the wall. “Noooo, meditation, my only weakness…”  
  
Gregor chuckled. “I’ve seen you try to meditate Tano, I think I’ll pass.”  
  
Ahsoka stuck her tongue out at both of them. Obi-Wan rose up, his smile now much more genuine.  
  
Cody was asleep sitting up half propped by a rolled up jacket against the back wall when Obi-Wan entered the bunk room. The lights were still set to the dull warmth of a red star. Under a harsher lighting, Cody would have looked washed out, like a ghost of himself.  
  
Obi-Wan sat own on the opposite bunk, and took advantage of the quiet in the room and the fact Cody had his eyes closed to look, just look, at this man, and let himself feel, vision and worries pushed to the side—an absolute luxury. Cody, much like Obi-Wan, had lived by duty, probably still did. The desires and dreams of the individual had so seldomly featured, that to take those few minutes felt like a transgression—that to try on those feelings, the tightness of his chest at the idea of the loss of this man, to see him in pain and not being able to help, to know he was here, alive and safe, felt overwhelming.  
  
“I can feel you thinking from here,” Cody said, voice a whisper.  
  
“How are you feeling?”  
  
“A little better,” Cody said, opening his eyes, and he was keeping tight enough of a reign on his emotions that only disquiet and physical pain slipped through to Obi-Wan. “More coherent, certainly. I thought Rex wasn’t real the last time I was awake.” He still looked feverish and frail, clad in a tunic Obi-Wan had last seen on Wolffe playing bait while Rex and Ahsoka bet on high stake games at a spaceport on the Outer Rim. The little red mynocks pattern was purposefully quite distinctive.  
  
“I’m sorry I cannot help with your injuries. My skills never laid with healing.”  
  
“I can take pain. Knowing I didn’t—“ his voice broke. Cody raised a hand to his face. His sleeve moved, revealing purple bruising around his wrist. They did not have enough bacta on board to use it on bruises that would heal without scars on their own. “It helps more than I can tell you.”  
  
The silence stretched. Neither quite looked into the other’s eyes. For the first time in years, they were as free as their duty and responsibilities ever came to, just two beings who had confessed what seemed a lifetime ago to have something more than friendship between them without the possibility to do anything about that state of affairs and now not quite sure how to pick up from there. At least Obi-Wan was. He didn’t know what Cody was thinking about that, if it even came to his mind, if it was even still true for him.    
  
Cody was the one to break the stand off, visibly struggling to stay awake. “What happened? I didn’t have much information about—…after.”  
  
The way he said it only meant one thing—after Order 66, after the rise of the Empire. _After_. It seemed so…tidy, and organized. After, and Before, and in the middle a heartbreak Obi-Wan was still moving on from for lack of knowing what else to do. Obi-Wan inhaled, corralled his thoughts.  
  
“I’ll gladly explain what I can—however I must first ask you if you still have your chip.”  
  
A pause, then: “As far as I know.” Cody tilted his head back, body lax like the rolled jacket and the wall behind him were the only thing holding him upright. It probably was. “I also know they…decay, or stop, after a certain time.” And there it was again, despair and hopelessness and anger, the thickness of it cloying Obi-Wan’s sense of _Cody_. It had been duty and responsibilities and worry and hidden amusement and pride, once upon a time. That terrible feeling of impossible nostalgia for the familiar settings and expectations of a war that destroyed everything they both knew drifted by again.  
  
Obi-Wan leaned his arms on his thighs, moving closer. “Were the _vode_ you helped in that situation?” Unsaid was the question: _Were you?_  
  
Cody nodded, a small, sharp move of assent. “It started two years after—or at least that’s when I noticed it, that some things, orders, sounded wrong. I suspect prior to that, the men whose chips didn’t work or decayed first or was taken out, who wanted out, found ways to escape, in the reorganization of the different corps and legions, or…reacted.” The word didn’t come close to what Cody was feeling, dread and despair in an unstoppable fall— _impossibly bright flowers dripping red, men without faces or heads, an empty bottle in a circle of lax hands—_  
  
Obi-Wan acted without thinking, getting up and crossing the arm’s length separating them to hold Cody’s hand in between his. He kneeled by the side of the bunk, at eye-level with Cody. Cody seemed frozen with shock at the touch.  
  
“I dreamed about that,” he said, with something in his voice that Obi-Wan could not put a name to.  
  
“You called to me, and so I came,” Obi-Wan said, repeating the words he had told Cody the day they had rescued him.  
  
“I dreamed of Geonosis again,” Cody continued as if he hadn’t heard Obi-Wan, “as if Point Rain was happening all over again.” He raised his hand—it shook—reaching for Obi-Wan’s face as if in a dream, the same dream Obi-Wan had seen. Cody’s hand was impossibly warm against Obi-Wan’s cheek, the touch startling them both. Obi-Wan covered Cody’s hand with his, keeping him in place, their eyes on each other.  
  
Cody’s thumb brushed Obi-Wan’s beard. It felt…like a taboo, like a transgression, like none of those and the weight of “Commander” and “General” still separating them into something that should have been called by those names. “I dreamed of this,” he said again, and the moment felt suspended in time, in intention, not a move made for fear of it shattering like so much crystal panes.  
  
Something had to give, someone had to take the first step—to move on, to go on. Daringly, without taking the time to agonize over his decision, Obi-Wan pressed a kiss to Cody’s palm, not breaking eye-contact.  
  
They were free, weren’t they?  
  
Cody’s lips parted on a soundless gasp, his free hand clenched on the blanket twisted around him. It was clear to Obi-Wan that he was struggling more than ever to stay awake and aware, blinking too fast. “Still?” The word was barely a whisper. It held a wealth of meanings; _still after those years on opposite sides, still after I betrayed you, still after I shot you, still after the Order fell and you became free, still after the Empire rose and I became a meat-droid, still as I’m growing older and I’m sick and barely coherent?_  
  
Obi-Wan only nodded in answer.  
  
A slight widening of his eyes—brighter with fever than they’d been until now—and Cody took his hand back with a weak tug, staring at the wall opposite him.  
  
“Please leave.”  
  
Obi-Wan complied.    
  
  
+  
  
“Are we going to talk about it?” Ashoka asked.  
  
The words startled Obi-Wan out of his half-meditative state staring at the whorls and glows of hyperspace through the cockpit. Beet beeped behind him, reminding them of the time—another three standard hours until their next stop and recalculation of hyperspace coordinates, another standard day before reaching Crait. Rex was the only one aside from Obi-Wan and Ahsoka currently awake. Wolffe had coaxed Gregor a couple of hours ago into taking some of their resupplied sleeping aids and crashing with him in the bunks. Cody had asked to take the same drugs some hours before, to try to sleep a full six hours without waking every hour from the pain and the fever.  
  
He and Obi-Wan hadn’t talked since Cody had asked him to leave the bunk room. There had been no invitation from Cody to come see him again. So Obi-Wan was keeping his distances, as much distance as one could in a cramped ship.  
  
“Which part would you prefer to start with?”  
  
Ahsoka frowned. “That’s kind of loaded, as a question—or even as a start of a conversation. I don’t know what to start with, and I know exactly how you can run circles around people just by talking.”  
  
“Are you implying I’d omit information by distracting you with another line of discussion?”  
  
Ahsoka glared at him then, laying her head on her closed fist, elbow on the arm of the pilot’s seat. “There’s no implying going on.”  
  
He smiled at her. He didn’t smile for long.  
  
“How come Anakin always seemed to believe you were the stuffiest of Jedi around when you clearly weren’t—I was in the middle of enough of your plans, remember—and that you still aren’t and probably would have been dragged before the Council as a heretic just for saying ’the Force and the Order aren’t the same thing’?”  
  
“Ah.” Obi-Wan weaved his fingers together, elbows on the armrest of the co-pilot’s seat, and stared at the blue nothingness outside of the cockpit. “I am… unsure on where to start.” He glanced at her. “Would you mind terribly if Rex was there as well? He’s expressed interest in this, and I am not certain I could have this conversation twice at the moment.”  
  
Ahsoka rose up to get Rex, leaving Obi-Wan to his thoughts. He felt like he couldn’t remember what he had told Ahsoka and Rex about Anakin’s ultimate fate, sparing them the knowledge of his Fall and the horrors—the sight of the Temple Halls littered with the bodies of his people and clones in armors that had spelled safety and friends and turning on the security holograms and mingled the burning heat of Mustafar searing the back of his throat—  
  
Obi-Wan flinched at the hand on his shoulder, barely registering that it was paired with his name. He half-raised himself out of the seat before realizing the hand had been Rex’s, and that Rex had taken a step back, hands up and face neutral, like it was practiced.  
  
“Back with us, Kenobi?”  
  
Rex moved like it was practiced because it was. He had had practice with his brothers, Obi-Wan knew, had seen it before, and not just from Rex. Every trooper seemed to know what to do around shocked and traumatized brothers. Obi-Wan closed his eyes to focus on his breath and re-center himself, leaving himself a reminder to meditate on this reaction and those emotions later, and _to let go of them_. That…was not something he’d wanted anyone to see, for all he knew it was not uncommon, that it was a natural way for many species’ brains to process and react to traumas like battles and difficult missions—and the past seven years certainly counted as one long, difficult mission. Obi-Wan sat back down slowly, one hand idly rubbing his beard.  
  
Ahsoka was looking at him with concern. “ ‘Not sure if you could have this conversation twice,’ huh? Are you okay to have it just the once?”  
  
Obi-Wan brushed aside her worry, or at least tried to, by putting on a smile and pushing his flashback and unease as far to the back of his mind as he could. He’d meditate on it later, much later. He spun the co-pilot’s seat around so as to face them both. “I thank you both for the concern. And I will answer any questions you both have to the best of my abilities. Knowledge should not disappear, especially first-hand knowledge of the Jedi and the Order.” They had seen what was happening wherever the Empire had reach, the loss of libraries, knowledge, people; the re-crafting of a narrative that showed that the Jedi had brought their doom unto their own heads, that painted them as war-mongers and liars.  
  
In truth, it had started long before the war had even started.  
  
“The Empire is turning the Force and the Jedi into tall tales monsters,” Rex said, catching on Obi-Wan’s train of thoughts. Ahsoka sat back in the pilot’s seat. Behind her, Rex took turned the comm seat around and took it.  
  
“And on the other hand, the Jedi Order is being turned into an impossible, ideal group that could do no wrong by some resistance groups,” Obi-Wan said. “As for your question, Ahsoka, its answer is long and complicated.” He glanced at Rex to include him in the conversation. “The easy answer is that at some point, saying the will of the Force and the will of the Jedi Order’s High Council on which I sat were two different things was not a so-called heretical statement. The High Council, by its position as the main interlocutor with the Senate, was inherently political—my master regularly challenged the Council on this position. Some Jedi choose to leave the Order to follow the Force, and many Jedi weren’t just trained and taught as Jedi.”  
  
“Oh,” Ahsoka said, her voice quiet. “Master Plo was a Baran Do Sage as well.”  
  
“And Master Billaba, Mace’s Padawan,” he added for Rex’s benefit, “was a Chalactan Adept as well as a Jedi Master. The Guardians of Jedha aren’t Jedi but follow the Force, and it was accepted that during Initiate years one would spend a year or more in the Holy City in pilgrimage and a learning retreat. In the last years, maybe even just the last two decades, the possibility to leave and learn from another group—be it Force-based or not—was being…strongly discouraged.” He trailed off. When he started speaking again, he kept his eyes on the blues of hyperspace. “The Jedi Order as you both knew it essentially became an armed branch of the Senate, even more than it was first made to be within the New Republic after the end of the Jedi-Sith wars of old. I believe it was manipulated into becoming so, diplomacy, exploration and conflict resolution brushed aside more and more for the whims of the Senators, but how much did we let ourself be manipulated versus what was already coming from internal stagnation?” He opened his hands, palms up. “There are so many questions we will never be able to have answers to.”  
  
Beet whistled softly, then silence fell in the cockpit.  
  
“As for Anakin,” Obi-Wan took a breath, “I’m afraid he never saw past the mask some people wore.”  
  
Rex echoed his words from two days ago, one eyebrow raised: “ _We all had our roles to play?_ ”    
  
“I was not…the most orthodox of Initiates, or of Padawans.” Ahsoka looked at him with a raised marking, clearly asking _no, really?_ Obi-Wan chuckled at her expression and at imagining her meeting his younger self. “So when Anakin came to be my student in less than ideal circumstances, I had a lot of pressure to perform as the best model of Jedi one could be, lest my every move be even more scrutinized than it had been until then, my conduct found lacking and my Padawan taken away from me.”  
  
Ahsoka looked horrified.  
  
Rex was frowning, arms crossed. “I’ve seen you on the battlefield, Kenobi. Is self-destruction the best of Jedi’s expression?”  
  
“My ally is the Force,” Obi-Wan answered him, not willing to follow and acknowledge Rex’s words and their implications.  
  
Sensing the shift in atmosphere, Ahsoka interrupted: “I have another question.”  
  
Obi-Wan nodded. Once again, he missed the weight of his robes, the familiarity of being able to hide his body language, his hands. Ahsoka’s question would be the last he’d agree to answer.  
  
“What was that about you leaving the Order to fight when you were my age?”  
  
He smiled without joy. That particular event seemed to belong to another world, to another life half-remembered. “Let me tell you about a world called Melida/Daan, the civil war that raged for centuries, and the children who fought for peace.” So Obi-Wan told them—not the report he had given to his Master when Qui-Gon Jinn had negotiated the final peace accords putting a stop to centuries of civil war, then to the High Council, but why he had stayed behind first, why he had left the Order to help a place he had been ordered to leave, knowing deep inside of himself that it was the right thing to do, the fear of not doing enough, of not being able to do enough, the weight of the dead in his arms, his failure.  
  
When he looked up—and when had he lowered his head to stare at the floor mid-way between him and Ahsoka and Rex?—Ahsoka looked horrified again, her hands slapped on her mouth. Beet made angry whistles he couldn’t parse. Rex looked carefully neutral, like he had before throwing a spear through a Zyggerian slave keeper on Kadavo, his anger deep and used to protect—but there was nothing to spear through, nothing to hit in front of him.  
  
“Kenobi— _Obi-Wan_ ,” Ahsoka said. “Unless you say no, I’m going to hug you now.”  
  
“What,” he replied, getting an armful of Togruta trilling under her breath in distress. “Ahsoka?” But she did nothing more than tighten her grip on him, half-sprawled across her seat and his lap. He tentatively raised his hands to place them on her back, and looked above her shoulder to Rex in a silent call for help or an explanation.  
  
Rex stared at him like Obi-Wan was the one reacting oddly. _Let her_ , he signed quickly, eyebrows rising up. He seemed about to add something else, then stopped halfway through the first sign and crossed his arms.  
  
Ahsoka did not let go for several minutes. By the end of it, the embrace felt natural.  
  
He wasn’t sure what to feel when she sat back, the back of her hand wiping her face, but he was grateful for the comfortable silence that stayed after.  
  
Gregor only managed four standard hours of sleep, coming up to the cockpit both bleary and twitchy with mugs of caf for each of them in hand. Obi-Wan relinquished the co-pilot seat to him with a certain amount of relief, and a polite refusal of the mug presented to him with a grunt.  
  
He left the cockpit, leaving Ahsoka and Gregor to the piloting and incoming hyperspace recalculation. He saw Rex follow from the corner of his eye. Was Rex going to explain what had happened?  
  
“Kenobi,” Rex said. They were in the glorified main corridor between the small galley and acceleration couch. Further down, the door to the bunks was closed, and so was the cargo hatch. A larger ship was not a luxury but a necessity at this point, if all the people present on board wished to stay. Obi-Wan had thought about it, what would happen the inevitable day they would split and go different paths. He thought he would go back to Tatooine for longer periods of time, keeping the Alliance work closer to his main base of operation. There would always need to be new groups seeded, but what would be needed in the long run was momentum, in-group trainers, dedicated senior operators able to be sent from one end of the known territories to the other. Having an obligation anchoring him to one planet was a vulnerability, for him, for the Alliance, and for Luke and his family.  
  
“Kenobi,” Rex repeated.  
  
Obi-Wan politely turned to face him, missing the weight of his robes once again. “Yes?”  
  
Rex exhaled through his nose. “I know you guys did things differently, but did you ever talk about what you told us to someone, other than as a report?”  
  
“As it happens, no. My master and I were immediately dispatched back to Mandalore after our arrival and initial debriefing on Coruscant.”  
  
“Mandalore?” Rex frowned, than one eyebrow rose up. “The civil war?”  
  
“The very same. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go meditate.”  
  
Rex nodded. “Just… Kenobi, if you were one of my men I’d tell you to go talk to your batchmates or a medic. Keeping this in get people killed. Anytime you want to talk, we’ll listen.” He took a breath, not enough of a pause for Obi-Wan to take his leave politely yet. “The day you want to talk about Cody, I’ll be there, too.”  
  
+  
  
Crait looked like nothing special from space, another grey-white world hanging in the speckled black of space. Beet received and decrypted the message the outpost sent for navigation to the landing coordinates. Without those, they would have been hard pressed to know where to head to: there were next to no visible features on the surface on the sole continent, only rocks and a brilliantly reflective white surface.  
  
Gregor, standing behind Wolffe in the co-pilot seat, twitched uneasily. Memories of Abafar were a reoccurring source of anxiety, compounded by the on-going memories issues, and brilliantly white desert was too close of a visual trigger for Gregor to be comfortable with it. Obi-Wan reached out and placed his hand on Gregor’s shoulder. The clone flinched then breathed deep, using the same pattern Obi-Wan had taught him for meditation. After a minute, Obi-Wan could feel him, if not relax, at least be calm enough to control the urge to jump out of his skin.  
  
Outside, there was still only a desert—and beyond, a series of mesa formations with no apparent break or passages. Beet whistled they were on course.  
  
“You sure, Bee?” Ahsoka asked. Beet beeped back, insistent that this was the right way.  
  
Ahsoka continued their descent, slowing down. The outpost, when it came into view, was not exactly anything they expected. In one of the forward formations was a immense structure resembling a door. The terrain in front of it was striated red, like blood and muscle exposed and torn out of the white surface. They were quickly close enough to see a few distant moving things, people and vehicles, and that the door indeed was one, opening into the mountain and raised up enough for ships to pass through. They were guided further in by the ground marshallers, to land in a delimited space further inside the base.  
  
Coming through as they did, Obi-Wan had counted thirty people at a glance. From this, the configuration of the base, and what he knew of it, he estimated there were between a hundred and a hundred and fifty people currently manning the outpost, their presences faint stars in the Force. It was both a good number and worrying—Obi-Wan hadn’t expected more than fifty here. Crait’s outpost was in a great position, close to several hyperspace lanes, but it also removed enough from major systems to be safe. Had the situation in the closest systems changed since he had gotten news from those?  
  
Rex and Cody were waiting for them at the ramp as it slowly moved down, letting the noise and dry salty air of the outpost in. Cody looked worse than when he and Obi-Wan had last talked: he seemed he was barely holding himself up, even with Rex under his arm and keeping a firm grip on his wrist and waist. Cody glanced at the group coming from the cockpit, hie eye briefly meeting Obi-Wan’s—it didn’t last. As soon as the ramp hit the ground, raising a little dust, Rex and Cody started walking down.  
  
There was a couple people waiting for all of them a few meters from the ramp. Obi-Wan noticed the three MPs placed around the landing space, and by the subtle shift in stances of the people with him he knew he wasn’t the only one. Some parts of the Alliance, be it former Separatist factions, groups friendly with the Order who had heard of the Temple and Order 66, or people who considered clones to be less than sentient beings, had issues with clones, an attitude Wolffe had great pleasure ripping apart verbally. It was also a good barometer of the friendliness of the groups and their efficacy at thinking and working for all the groups oppressed by the Empire the Alliance fought for, and not just their own interests.  
  
So far, not a great indication.  
  
The short Twi’lek with medic patches on her shoulders gasped as Cody and Rex got closer, quickly coming to Cody’s other side. “Hi, I’m Acting Head Medic Tennwa’ran, we do not have a repulsor stretcher but I can get you one of the lifts from the mechanics, can you walk to the medbay—“ was what Obi-Wan heard from her. Cody seemed in good hands.  
  
Gregor, walking behind Obi-Wan, got closer to whisper “I’m going with them,” before doing just that.  
  
The second person waiting, a male Bothan in the same nondescript clothes Obi-Wan and the others were wearing, watched the exchanges and divide of the group, making a hand gesture for two of the waiting MPs to follow the Head Medic. To his credit, he didn’t try to hide it.  
  
“General Kenobi,” he greeted, giving a slight nod. “I’m afraid I do not know your companions on sight, but you are welcome to Crait Outpost. I’m Commander Vihem Dov’ev.”  
  
“My thanks for the welcome, Commander,” Obi-Wan answered the nod in kind, then he presented the remainder of the group: “Operatives Ahsoka Tano and Wolffe, and Beet. We have several crates of ration foods, energy cells and bacta in our ship to offload.”     
  
Dov’ev sighed, the rigid stance he had held until then vanishing. “Force bless you—re-supplying has been an issue, and our hydroponic systems keep failing.” He made a gesture for them to follow him. “Our Head Medic and several squads left for supplies and repairs, but our closest allies have been in the line of sight of the Empire.” That could be one explanation for the MPs—but Obi-Wan was well aware there was never just one answer to any situation.  
  
Beet whistled it would stay with the ship and supervise the handling of the supplies. Wolffe, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan followed Dov’ev further in, the remaining MP behind them.  
  
“I could have a look at your systems if you want,” Ahsoka offered. “I’m not specialized in agriculture but I’m pretty good at mechanics.”  
  
“We would be grateful for your help, Operative.”  
  
“What’s with the security?” Wolffe said, taking in the hangar-slash-cavern. There were several emplacements clearly open for ships—most probably the ones taken by the Head Medic and the squads that had left on the supply run—and quite more people than Obi-Wan would have expected seeming to just be hanging around to check the latest arrivals out. There was no other obvious MPs in sight; it was just busy, wary people.  
  
Dov’ev did not answer, led them to rooms carved out on the sides of the hangar. Only once the door closed behind them in what seemed to be his office and a storage space all at once did he answer—the MP had stayed outside.  
  
“My apologies for not answering you earlier. Until my Acting Head Medic confirms your companion does not have an active chip anymore, Security will be trailing you—all of you.” His fur rippled in annoyance. He picked up a datapad.  
  
“Should I take that it’s not a decision you agree with?” Obi-Wan asked. It was not part of the standard operating procedures they had helped set up or encountered until now. Wolffe snorted, arms crossed.  
  
“I might not have known Operative Wolffe—Commander, am I right?—on sight, but Marshall Commander Cody is not an unknown. That you, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, were standing right next to him and are not dead tells me all I need to know. Your crew is not going to have sleeper agents infiltrating an out-of-the-way base to take out what little personnel we have. But,” Dov’ev spread his hands, leaning against his desk—there was no other place to sit and he did not offer them seats— “it’s all protocol and information and need to know and appearances.”  
  
“Politics,” Wolffe rumbled, unhappily.  
  
“And propaganda,” Dov’ev agreed. “As fascinating as this is, what can I do for you and your crew, General?”  
  
“ ’Operative Kenobi’ please. A place to rest and regroup while our companion is seen by Medical, nothing more.” Obi-Wan inclined his head toward Ahsoka. “Ahsoka already volunteered her mechanic skills, and I’d be glad to offer my expertise if you are in need of it.” He wanted to know more about the movements of the Empire in the nearby systems that had Dov’ev worried.  
  
“You’ve chosen quite the inhospitable place for R&R, Operative. We’ve got salt, rocks, and more salt.” Dov’ev tapped something on the datapad. “As for your offer, I would very much appreciate your input and experience, Operative Kenobi.” The datapad beeped, and Dov’ev rose from the desk. “Let me show you to your quarters.”  
  
Wolffe, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan shared a glance at that. That was not the usual duties of a base Commander, this was more internal politics at play. Show off the newcomers, one of them clearly a well-known Jedi, another clearly a clone, send a message that there was nothing to worry about. They exited the office-slash-storage room, picking up their MP escort again.  
  
“I’m looking forward to a bunk I don’t have to share while you and Rex are in arm’s reach of me and attempting to morph into one being,” Wolffe said to Ahsoka while he stretched his arms above his head, making a show of it. He was wearing the “Best ride in Thetis” jacket again.    
  
“Hey! You don’t see us complain about you and Gregor,” she replied. Their voices carried just enough to reach the busy, still wary people working in the first rows of ships of the hangar.  
  
“Unlike some people we can share a bunk without it turning into a wrestling match.”  
  
“Children,” Obi-Wan admonished with a quirk of his lips. Banter and small talk—a universal signal of “we belong here, nothing to see.”  
  
Ahsoka straightened up. She was taller than both Wolffe and him now. “Hey, I take offense to that, you just finally called me an adult a few days ago!”  
  
“Ain’t that a terrifying prospect.”  
  
By the slight amused rustling of fur around Dov’ev’s mouth, they were doing exactly what he had expected of them.  
  
+  
  
“Your read on our Commander?” Obi-Wan asked Wolffe and Ahsoka. The quarters they had been assigned were fairly large, and set up in a way that made it clear it wasn’t a quasi-military organization that had created them. Those were habitation quarters, dating back from the time Crait had been a mining operation with a permanent population. Wolffe and Ahsoka had each claimed a room while checking them out and looking for bugs, leaving Obi-Wan the last one, before regrouping in the square room set up as galley, storage space and living room all at once, benches carved from the rock on all sides.  
  
“Propaganda and politics. Half of that because we’re clones, half something else. The majority of the Bothans in the Alliance are Intelligence, no clue about Dov’ev’s original assignment, I hadn’t heard his name before today.”  
  
“I want to know about the local situation—Naboo isn’t so far from here, and I haven’t heard more than the usual coming in. I’ll ask around discreetly when I check their hydroponic set up.” Ahsoka crossed her arms.  
  
Obi-Wan nodded at their assessments. He preferred to know when he was used as a pawn or a figurehead in someone’s else play—once burned, twice shy after all. Dov’ev had been fairly transparent, at least.  
  
A chime, and they turned as one toward the door. The presence behind was faintly familiar; Rex entered. At once, the tension in the room went back to its regular levels.  
  
Rex frowned. “Anything I need to know?”  
  
“Internal politics, and we’re being used as pretty pictures, pretty much it,” Wolffe said, taking a seat on one of the hard benches.  
  
“They’re going with ‘until we’re sure the chips are inactive, you’re getting an escort’,” Ahsoka added.  
  
Rex sniffed. “Figures. Gregor’s staying in the med bay, Cody’s in their tank and not getting out for a couple of days unless there’s an emergency.”  
  
Obi-Wan rubbed at his beard. “Let’s review our next steps then. It might be for the best not to stay any longer than we have to.” He paused, looked at Ahsoka, at Rex, at Wolffe. “Swapping ship is still necessary—however, and that’s without knowing if Cody will stay with us or not, and without Gregor’s and Beet’s input—we must consider adding a couple people, if only to have a fully rounded crew.”  
  
“Medic?” Rex said.  
  
“That’s one of the positions to consider,” Obi-Wan answered.  
  
“I’m not opposed, if we’re going with a larger ship in the first place,” Wolffe said.  
  
“Do you have people in mind?” Ahsoka said.  
  
“Not at the moment. Any suggestion is welcome.”  
  
Rex crossed his arms. “What is, ultimately, the goal of our group? I think that should be the starting point.” Obi-Wan looked at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ahsoka and Wolffe looking at them like it was a match of hand-tennis. “Helping the Alliance however we can is good, but we could do more and better with long term goals, and set short-terms goals. There will always be someone, somewhere, who can use our expertise and set of skills—we should take advantage of the leeway Central Command left us,” there was a mumble from Wolffe’s, a ‘as if they can tell us what to do’, “and do what we do best.”  
  
Obi-Wan’s doubts about what he was doing and the name of the Alliance itself—the Alliance To Restore The Republic—came back to the forefront of his mind. He took a breath; this was not using fancy talk to get his way, to resolve a sticky situation, it was being honest in front of men he considered friends, in front of a young woman who had been his student, in front of the closest thing he would call a family.  
  
“Opposing the Empire, opposing oppression, is a necessity, and can only come from coordinated organization. We cannot go back to a previous situation, where stagnation allowed complacency and corruption. I am now aware that there were…misconceptions, of the Order, of the Force, that became law. That some things and personas were believed to be true,” he recalled Rex’s voice, echoing his own earlier words, _We all had our roles to play_ , “and that this state of affairs cannot stand.”  
  
Wolffe and Ahsoka were looking at him now, their eyes determined.  
  
“I do not believe restoring the Republic as we knew it will be anything else than a repetition of past errors. I do not believe that rebuilding the Jedi Order as we knew it will be anything else than a repetition of past errors. And to avoid that, knowledge needs to be free and widespread—knowledge of the past, and knowledge of the Force. I’d also like to make sure that any _vod_ who got out has resources and is safe from any repercussions from the Empire.”  
  
He took a breath. “But those are my personal goals, and they can fit into any other goals we have. So,” he said, turning to his audience, “what should be our goals, aside from the small matter of toppling an empire to its foundations?”  
  
Rex smiled at him.  
  
+  
  
Obi-Wan looked up at Cody, sedated, suspended in bacta. The blue tint of the thick gel substance cast color on everything, lending a certain unreality to the medbay. It looked like being underwater, just deep enough to still see light, but not high enough that it was obvious there was something else above.  
  
It was something of a good description of the state of affairs between him and Cody.  
   
Acting Head Medic Tennwa’ran stepped up to stand next to him. Obi-Wan had hear her coming, yawning out of the pre-built cubicle tucked in a corner that was her office. “I wish staring at them sped up the process. Harnessing the power of worried teammates and family members would be good for everyone.”  
  
He quirked an eyebrow at her.  
  
“Not something that’s said?” She asked, head titled to the side.  
  
“Not something one would expect to hear from their medic.”  
  
“Sharp tongue comes with the territory, bedside manner is optional.” She knocked on the bacta tank. “Your buddy here will be fine. He’s a fighter.”  
  
Rex and Ahsoka had departed for Takodana a couple hours previous with Beet, before Ahsoka could check out the hydroponic issues and keep an ear out on the rumor mill; Gregor and Wolffe were still, if not sleeping, at least resting in the room Wolffe had claimed the day prior. Obi-Wan had chosen against sleeping, instead went over the reports and intel Dov’ev had wanted his input on—there had been some testing there too, from easy, obvious intel to more complicated information once Obi-Wan passed whichever test needed to be passed.  
  
The movements of the Empire in the sector were sadly unexpected, just going much faster than what Obi-Wan had last heard of. Obi-Wan had made several mental notes to come back to the intel with Gregor and Wolffe and get their analysis of the situation later on.  
  
Being in the medbay, next to the tank, was calming. There at least he knew there was absolutely nothing he could do but wait.  
  
“How much longer will he need to be there?” He asked Tennwa’ran.  
  
She hummed, tapped at the control screen. “He’d be good to get out now, if there’s an emergency, with a good two weeks of recovery. Without it, another fifteen hours and he’ll be like new. The internal injuries responded well to the bacta, which isn’t always a certainty when they’ve had the time to, well, get worse.” She turned to him, clapped her hands together. “And now it’s your turn!”  
  
“My turn?”  
  
“Yes, I’ve seen almost all of your crew save for Operative Tano, and Gregor gave me a quick rundown on the main issues—I like him, he’s got steady hands—so, when’s the last time you slept, Master?”     
  
“I assure you, I’m fine.”  
  
“Not what I asked, but hey, the most action I’ve gotten in the last two days aside from a torture survivor is a wrench dropped on someone’s head and stubbed toes, if you want to drag one of the cots by the tank and out of my way I’m not opposed.”  
  
The last thing Cody had told him directly was still _Please leave._ There had been no further invitation, and there was a difference between inquiring about his health and staying to sleep at his side. No, Obi-Wan would wait for Cody’s consent, for his approval of Obi-Wan’s presence at his side.  
  
“Thank you, Head Medic, but I will make use of the quarters we were given.”  
  
She yawned again, lekku curling on either side of her as if following the movement. “Yeah okay, I know better than to run after people who will not listen to me anyway, so good night or something, and my door is always open.”  
  
+  
  
The next day was surprisingly restful. Obi-Wan might have only slept a few hours once Wolffe was up and sitting with a datapad in the main room of their quarters, all but taking watch, but it had been deep, good sleep. Once the day shift came back around, they and Gregor went to the room that was used as mess hall, escort in tow. It didn’t take long before Wolffe and Gregor were invited to join a larger table, trading stories and jokes with a mixed crew of pilots and rebel troopers.  
  
Obi-Wan—at his own table, well aware of the glances sent his way—let his ears pick up bits of conversations, complaints. In the background of his mind the Force hummed with all those lives; their common goal, what made them a group, making them shine further. It felt right to be there. The Force was in all things, and shone in all beings. Space or lack of was not an obstacle to it. Experiencing it in a crowd attuned to each other lent it a different flavor, a different tune.  
  
He let his eyes drop half closed, hands around a lukewarm cup of caf that was mostly water, searching for a Force signature that was as familiar to him as Ahsoka’s, Wolffe’s, Gregor’s and Rex’s were now—as Anakin’s had been, once. It was there, muted as if by sleep or unconsciousness, warm, alive.  
  
Cody was fine, would be fine.  
  
Obi-Wan breathed, took a mental step back, falling into a light meditation surrounded by all those people, all those lives. After a few moments, a couple of them resonated slightly, unconsciously picking on his presence. It wasn’t much, well below the levels of an untrained youngling as the Order would have accepted them once upon a time, but it was there. _Widespread knowledge of the Force_ , he thought, and maybe those few presences would be interested in hearing more.  
  
The rest of the day was spent on Dov’ev’s intel, with Wolffe and Gregor adding their observations. Dov’ev was a very precise person, going for the details and sometimes losing sight of the big picture. Between him, Obi-Wan, Wolffe and Gregor, and Dov’ev’s intelligence staff, they had a wide panel of experiences and perspective. There was grim contentment in the room pretty fast—at the knowledge they had done good work, at the knowledge of what that work had revealed. Several more planets and systems in the surrounding sectors were all but lost to the Alliance. Rebuilding their networks and contacting local rebel cells and insurgents if any were still left would take years.  
  
That the intel and their conclusions would be copied into Wolffe’s own datapads later under heavy encryption was not even discussed. It was second nature by now. Information was worth everything.  
  
+  
  
It was a beeping mouse droid carrying a folded flimsi note that broke their concentration over interpreting intercepted transmissions. Dov’ev straightened from his lean over the main table, his human aide taking a step back at the same time.  
  
“Ah, I think this is for you gentlemen,” Dov’ev said, crouching to retrieve the note. “Thank you mouse, you’re free to return to your duties.” The droid beeped in answer, and zipped back from where it had came, brushing the boots of the MP escort at the door. Dov’ev stood up, extending his arm to give the note to Obi-Wan. “Tennwa’ran likes the mouse droids to carry non-urgent messages, she feels it brings a more personal touch to communication.”  
  
“You have quite a colorful medic,” Obi-Wan said, taking the note. As he had expected once he had heard the medic’s name, the note said: _De-tanking your buddy, come by whenever!_ He saw Wolffe glance at it and make a hand gesture to Gregor. Gregor raised an eyebrow in answer—all in all the nonverbal communication was a quick “ready to go” “done? I follow” exchange.  
  
“If that’s all for today, Commander?” Obi-Wan said, folding back the note and slipping it in his jacket pocket.  
  
“Your input was invaluable, Operatives. Thank you,” Dov’ev said with a solemn nod. He had the look of a man who was not looking forward to sharing bad news. Obi-Wan, having been in his place in the past, understood that all too well.  
  
Obi-Wan, Wolffe and Gregor took their leave of the room, MPs escort snapping into place as they crossed the threshold.  
  
“Look at that, right on time!” Tennwa’ran exclaimed when they entered the medbay. She and an old 1-2B medical droid were the only ones in. “You can help me get your friend out, our harness-clamp thingie is on the fritz,” she said with a smile. “I’m getting him out before the sedative wears out, it’s smoother all around to wake up in something else than warm goop.”    
  
Wolffe laughed. “I like you. So, where do you want me?”  
  
Tennwa’ran climbed around the bacta tank to stand above it while the droid monitored everything from the floor. It switched on for the top to open and Cody to lift up in the harness that had kept him submerged in the tank. Tennwa’ran indicated for Wolffe to get closer and on the other side, to use a crate as ladder so that he could help her take Cody out. There was a stretcher mounted on a repulsor lift to the side, ready to receive Cody.  
  
Obi-Wan and Gregor let them to it, far enough to not crowd the already cramped space around the tank but close enough to lend a hand if necessary.  
  
“Wish Rex was there,” Gregor said, arms crossed, watching his vode. Obi-Wan glanced at him. Gregor looked back for an instant before turning back to the tank and Cody, limp and dripping over Wolffe and Tennwa’ran and the stretcher, continuing, “He can get to Cody better than Wolffe or I can. Come to think of it, he can get to you better, too.” He sighed. “Don’t let Cody push you away.”  
  
Obi-Wan frowned, caught by surprise. Before he could ask for an explanation, Gregor had already joined Wolffe and Tennwa’ran, the latter good-naturedly complaining about the monitoring equipment and tubing still stuck to Cody.  
  
It didn’t take long until Cody was mostly free of bacta, tucked in a dry wrap and a blanket on the stretcher with a couple privacy panels around, and Wolffe, Gregor and Obi-Wan waiting for him to regain consciousness. Tennwa’ran checked him up, declared he’d wake up in ten minutes or so, and left them to wait, asking them to call her when he woke up.  
  
Cody didn’t look right, eyes closed on a stretcher, but he looked better than he had on the ship, the color back in his face. The new scar didn’t look so new anymore. Obi-Wan let himself breathe in, breathe out, until he could feel Cody’s presence, the calm of unconsciousness and the first stirrings of awakening.  
  
When he looked up, Wolffe and Gregor weren’t there anymore.  
  
“G’ner’l?”  
  
Obi-Wan turned back to Cody at the slurred sounds. Cody was fighting the last of the sedative, unfocused eyes blinking too rapidly.  
  
“Give it a few minutes,” Obi-Wan told Cody, carefully opening himself to the Force. Cody was there in front of him, warm and not in pain and tinged with confusion, the feel of him heavy and slow as if anchored by sleep. “You’re still half-sedated.”  
  
“W’ht— hap’ned?”  
  
Obi-Wan couldn’t help but smile. He dragged the nearest crate next to the cot, sat on it. “You are a stubborn man, my friend.”  
  
Cody frowned, every movement in his face disjointed. He blinked again. “Back… at you,” he said, very slowly and deliberately.  
  
“That will certainly not make me believe you are completely awake and aware.”  
  
Cody blinked again. The lights weren’t as bright and full on white-spectrum as they were closer to the working spaces by Tennwa’ran’s office cubicle. They remained an even dull yellow that cast shadows at every angle and washed out skin and eyes. Obi-Wan moved, forearms resting on his thighs. Cody tracked the movement, the creaking of the synth leather jacket. After a minute, he closed his eyes again, inhaled deeply.  
  
Obi-Wan felt the earlier confusion and sleepiness coming from Cody recede, sharp emotional pain and guilt and fear taking their place.    
  
“Is it out?” Cody asked.  
  
“It’s out,” Obi-Wan replied, his eyes moving to Cody’s newest thin scar, all that was physically left of the chip. It already looked healed and old, older than the larger scar that twisted on the right side of his face in a distorted mirror of the one on the left. “It wasn’t active anymore.”  
  
Cody kept his eyes closed. The silence stretched between them, like a familiar friend, its song unheard. Obi-Wan looked at him, drank in Cody’s face, the new lines, the tension at his brow he wanted nothing more than to help alleviate; he wanted to touch him, learn the way his face carved the lines of his smile, of his frown, but while Cody hadn’t asked him to leave, he hadn’t told him he could touch him either.  
  
So Obi-Wan only watched.  
  
Cody’s breathing, over the next few minutes, became more regular, more deliberate. He finally moved, rolled to his back, hands moving up to trace the new scars. This time, when he opened his eyes, there was none of the earlier bleary blinking. Obi-Wan, tentatively expending his sense of the Force, felt nothing of his emotions. Cody had put himself back together, moving back being his natural mental shields.  
  
This moment, the silence, was coming to an end.  
  
“Medic Tennwa’ran will want to see you now that you are awake.”  
  
Cody slide his gaze to Obi-Wan. “Is this a Rebel base?”  
  
“Alliance, on Crait,” Obi-Wan nodded. The name of the planet seemed to be a complete unknown to Cody.  
  
“The others?”  
  
“Wolffe and Gregor were there when you got out of the tank—to be quite frank, I have no idea where they went. I would not be surprised if they were in the mess making fast friends with the half of the personnel they have not charmed yet.” Obi-Wan linked his hands together. “Rex joined Ahsoka and Beet to switch our ship for a less conspicuous one, on Takodana.”  
  
“Takodana? Pirate Queen Maz Kanata’s Takodana?”  
  
“The very same, although do not ask me for details—I have none.”  
  
Cody carefully sat up. “I take it that seeing the medic will get me out of here.”  
  
“If she gives her okay, yes.”  
  
“What then?”  
  
Obi-Wan, who had been about to get up, aborted the movement. He paused to gather his thoughts, trying not to blurt that Cody was free to do as he pleased, but would he please talk to Obi-Wan? “Then… then that is up to you to decide what you want to do. Gregor and Wolffe certainly want to see and talk to you, as do Rex and Ahsoka. You’re more than welcome to share the quarters the base commander gave us as long as we are on-planet. After that…” His mouth dried up. “You can do anything you want, Cody. You can stay here, or we can bring you to any planet in the galaxy you wish to see, or you can disappear in the Outer Rim with enough credits to build a new life, or…” Obi-Wan raised his eyes, met Cody’s. “Or you could stay with us, doing…well, whatever it is we do on behalf of the Alliance, with gambling and people shooting at us on the side.” The levity he had tried to inject in his tone and words fell flat.    
  
“General—“ Cody’s voice broke half way through the word. “Obi-Wan. Despite the years. And _in spite_ of what happened: My place has always been by my brothers’ side—and by your side.”  
  
“Still?” The word was barely a whisper—a mirror of the last conversation they had had, emotions thick and almost bubbling to the surface. They did not break eye contact.  
  
Hope, again, always.  
  
Cody nodded slowly.  
  
“When I say: “Call me up when he wakes up,” that meant “Call me up when he wakes up,” not ten minutes later,” Tennwa’ran said, walking past the privacy screen and interrupting the moment. “Not following medic’s directive makes for cranky medics and nobody wants that.”  
  
Cody had startled when she came in, right hand moving as if going for a sidearm or a rifle he was not carrying. It took a minute until his hand relaxed, a minute Tennwa’ran took in stride.  
  
“And I wish you’d waited until you sat up, side effect of sedation plus bacta plus a fuck-ton of painkillers is usually throwing up and I’m known to make people clean that up.”  
  
“You are, my dear, absolutely terrifying,” Obi-Wan said, trying to divert her attention for one minute more, until Cody took a moment to assess her and his breathing had slowed down.  
  
Tennwa’ran turned, made a face at Obi-Wan. “You’re not out of the fire, Master, you’re lucky you’re no patient of mine right now.”  
  
“He’s a terrible patient,” Cody said, letting her check his vitals.  
  
“I am assuredly not.”  
  
Cody answered Tennwa’ran questions—“Feeling dizzy?” “No.” “Feeling nauseous?” “No.” “In pain.” “No.”—then: “You made Cross and Kix cry in frustration.”  
  
Obi-Wan, who had stood up, straightened up. “Why, that is lies and slander.”  
  
Tennwa’ran raised a brow ridge, looking between the two of them. “Yeaaah, I think I’ll trust the Commander on that. Also,” she turned back to Cody, “you’re good to go and that sounds like a good story.” She patted his shoulder. “Me and the other medic people share a table at meal shift. You should come, ’s’always good to know how other medics dealt with problem patients.”  
  
Obi-Wan looked at her go. When he turned back to Cody, who was carefully getting up, stretching legs and arms and checking himself, Cody looked far too amused. A beat later and their gazes were back to somber, the weight of their conversation and all that remained unsaid between them.  
  
“I think we need to talk,” Cody said.  
  
“Yes,” Obi-Wan breathed. “Yes, we do.”  
  
+  
  
The main room of their quarters was where they ended up. Gregor and Wolffe had been waiting for them there, and Obi-Wan left them to their reunion, choosing instead to go find some food from the mess hall he could bring back for Cody.  
  
When Obi-Wan came back, Wolffe and Gregor weren’t in, Cody’s hair was slightly damp from a water shower, and he was wearing clothes Obi-Wan was pretty sure had been picked up by Rex, several planets back. There was no mynock pattern on eye-searing background colors in sight.  
  
Obi-Wan deposited his find—a container of tubers in spiced sauce, flatbread, caf, and a tub of labne—on the table where Cody was sitting. Cody looked up.  
  
“Their food is limited, but it’s not bad,” Obi-Wan said.  
  
Cody did not move, looked at Obi-Wan for a moment. When he reached for the container and the eating utensils, it was almost a surprise.  
  
“Sit down,” he said.  
  
Obi-Wan sat.  
  
Cody speared a tuber, looked at it. Then he put it back in, laying the utensil across the rim of the container. He linked his hands together, thumbs rubbing at his lips.  
  
“I don’t know where to start,” he finally said. He laid his left hand on the tabletop next to the container, and his right in front of him.  
  
Obi-Wan looked at this hand, tanned and scarred and warm, and at his own arms, crossed and resting on the table. It would be nothing, to uncross them and reach out and lay his hand—paler, colder, less scarred—over Cody’s. That distance, between their hands, might as well have been the size of the galaxy, to say nothing of the very act of moving.  
  
“I thought I had killed you. For four years, I carried that with me, that I had killed the man I loved. And that I could do nothing but cry in the corner of my mind that was still mine. Cry and keep going and have enough free will to give a nudge or close my eyes at the right time when one of my brothers could leave.” There it was again, the deep dread and despair, an endless well of it— and the terrifying image of _impossibly bright flowers dripping red, men without faces or heads, an empty bottle in a circle of lax hands_ —Obi-Wan inhaled sharply at the details, now that Cody’s recollections weren’t muddled by fever and pain. This, he knew, Cody would carry with him all his life; all the times he had been too late.  
  
Obi-Wan reached out and held his hand. Cody closed his eyes, creating new lines in his face. He turned his hand over, linked his fingers with Obi-Wan’s.  
  
“I’m sorry you were alone,” Obi-Wan said. “I’m sorry I could not help more. I’m sorry I could not find you sooner.” He breathed. “I’m sorry for the loss of so many of your brothers.”  
  
“ _Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum_.”  
  
Obi-Wan closed his eyes. He knew those words—the remembrance for the dead. He had heard it on Mandalore first, running for his life and Satine’s, then every day from the very start of the war. Cody had been one voice out of many, on those days, the 212th united in grieving for brothers lost. He had never heard only Cody’s voice saying those words.  
  
He took a gamble.  
  
Obi-Wan opened his eyes, looked at Cody. Looked at the grey hair he had not see grow, at the new scars that already seemed familiar, at the cheekbones he longed to touch, the mouth he wanted to kiss, at _Cody_ , alive and in good health and in front of him.  
  
“Stay with us,” he said. “As long as you want. But stay with us.”  
  
Cody opened his eyes, looked at him.  
  
“Stay with me,” Obi-Wan finished.  
  
Cody moved both their hand, until he had Obi-Wan’s palm pressed against his mouth. He kissed it. Obi-Wan closed his eyes. Cody was not hiding his emotions again. There was still guilt and anger and dread and nightmares, there always would be, much like Obi-Wan carried his own demons—there was also _Cody_ , his steadfastness and his strength and his hope and his love.  
  
“Oh,” Obi-Wan said, at the force of it.  
  
“I believe that’s cheating,” Cody chided him, without any heat. The smile hiding at the corner of his lips was a beautiful thing.  
  
“I’m afraid words are not enough to tell you what I can feel and how much I feel for you in return.”  
  
Cody’s gaze became very soft—yes indeed, that smile was a beautiful thing.  
  
+  
  
The ship Rex, Ahsoka and Beet came back with at the end of night shift was a Corellian freighter much larger than their previous ship. Obi-Wan would have been hard pressed to name the original manufacturing line; it had been modified and repaired and had changed hands so many times since its original manufacture date—which could have been ten years ago like it could have been two centuries ago, the Corellian Engineering Corporation was nothing if holding up to the test of time.  
  
“Meet the _Radiant Star_ , which is probably a joke of some kind. Four canons, top of the line hyperspace modulator, smaller cockpit but larger bunk rooms and three of them even, more cargo space, larger galley, hidden compartments galore. Beet’s already half way in love with the computer, it has an astrogator’s motivator.”  
  
Ahsoka smiled and patted one panel. Once upon a time, it had had a red triangle painted on it.  
  
“I really don’t want to know the detail of your acquaintance with Maz Kanata, do I?”  
  
Ahsoka smiled. “Nope. Plausible deniability and all that.” She looked up at the ship, and Obi-Wan suspected Beet was not the only one half-way in love with it.  
  
“I didn’t see Cody yet,” she said.  
  
“He’s with Wolffe and Commander Dov’ev. They are wrapping up his debriefing.” It had gone on all night, much longer than Obi-Wan was happy with. The information—any information—was critical, but pushing that way didn’t always give the best results. And Obi-Wan cared about Cody’s health just as much as he cared about the information. It was a thin line to walk he had no experience with.  
  
She glanced at him, a sharp look that saw more than she let on. “How long does that give me to check their agri set up, you think?”  
  
Obi-Wan smiled. “Three standard hours, no more,” with the implicit _I will not allow that debriefing to go on any longer_. “No need to take your packs off the ship, we’ll be going soon.” He would be going to bring what little they had brought in their temporary quarters abroad as soon as Ahsoka left for the hydroponic systems.  
  
“Got it.” She called for Beet, but stopped and turned before the both of them left. “Kenobi,” she rummaged in the pack she had kept at her side. She got a rectangular package out. “Me and Rex, we thought about all the things we talked about, and our goals. I think that’s a good start,” she nodded at the package.  
  
Obi-Wan took it.  
  
“Also, I’m very happy for you and Cody.”  
  
He tilted his head. “You haven’t seen Cody yet, or asked anything—how?”  
  
She took a step closer, a smile in her eyes. “I never saw how much you lied with your face, before. You’re not hiding now.” She was of a height with him, and she inclined her head, forehead to forehead. He breathed in the touch, the Force singing. She moved, turned around and left, leaving behind her a sense of calm and peace.  
  
The package, when Obi-Wan opened it, contained two flimsiplast journals with reinforced synthleather covers. In the first one, someone had written in the mandalorian alphabet _Knowledge should live on_.  
   
+  
  
None of them were sad to leave Crait. Gregor’s shoulders relaxed more and more for each klick away from the surface.  
  
“Hello space my old friend,” Wolffe hummed, in the copilot’s chair, Ahsoka in the main one. Obi-Wan was at the comm, Gregor at the navigator’s station, Beet plugged in behind him. Cody and Rex were standing behind the seats; the cockpit was cramped, but it did not feel too small. It felt cozy instead.  
  
“Don’t you dare give me an earworm,” Gregor told him. “If I’m still humming that song by tonight I’ll keep you awake too.”  
  
Beet whistled at them it was perfectly able to find them the original song and play it.  
  
“I think we’ll be good without it, thank you Beet,” Obi-Wan said. He did not miss Ahsoka’s wink and thumb-up at the astromech. “Children, the lot of you,” he sighed.  
  
“Where to then, old man?” Rex asked.  
  
Obi-Wan half-closed his eyes, knew in some part of him that was not wholly anchored in physical reality that Ahsoka was doing the same. As one, they said: “Saleucami.”  
  
“Saleucami it is,” Gregor said.  
  
When Obi-Wan opened his eyes, Cody was still looking at him. Their gazes met.  
  
In the inside pocket of his jacket, the journal was a heavy, steady weight—the past, and the future. And in front of him, bathed in blue from the lights of hyperspace, Cody’s gaze had a weight, patience and steadiness—their past, their future, and their present.  
  
Hope, always.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Happy early birthday to me! A year and three countries later, this is done. 
> 
> I'm around at [alyyks on tumblr](alyyks.tumblr.com).


End file.
